Microsoft Committed to Bringing Call Of Duty to Nintendo Acquisition After Activation

After Microsoft repeatedly acquired Activision Blizzard, one of the most controversial arguments against it was Call of Duty’s continued presence on PlayStation platforms. Xbox head Phil Spencer has repeatedly promised that the franchise will still appear on the main competitor’s platform, but that didn’t stop Sony from treating the series’ loss as anticompetitive to prevent the deal from going through. After saying he has no problem keeping Call of Duty on Sony hardware in the long termSpencer has now extended and formalized that promise with Nintendo and Valve.

Last night, Spencer announced on Twitter that Microsoft had signed a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty back to Nintendo. In a follow-up tweet, Spencer said that the series will also remain on Steam. Of course, all of this is subject to the publisher’s approval of Activision Blizzard’s acquisition, which continues to be scrutinized in the ongoing approval processes from government regulators. .

Call of Duty is yet to arrive on Switch, and the last entry to launch on the Nintendo platform was 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts, which appeared on the Wii U. There will be no new entries in 2023, and then the acquisition will complete, assuming it’s successful. As such, it’s unclear when we might see Call of Duty return to Mario’s house. Contrary to Sony, Nintendo hasn’t made a fuss about the Activision deal, and you could easily argue that Switch sales aren’t affected by the lack of a Call of Duty presence. Even so, franchising certainly doesn’t hurt.

In other recent Xbox news, the publisher announced that it will increase the price of first-party Xbox Series X/S games by $70 in 2023.